Infernal Stapler
A 3-mana 3/3 weapon is not bad on paper, but Stapler’s drawback is horrendous. We’re nearly casting Pyroblast on ourselves for the privilege of using this weapon. We do recognize that this weapon enables “pain” synergies, but there comes a point where the self-damage is so high that it isn’t worth it. Imagine equipping this weapon and using it to kill minions and control the board? We’ll be at 10-15 life by turn 5.
Demon Hunter doesn’t have the health recovery of Warlock, which has ‘INFERNAL!’ serving as a big reason why Pain Warlock can afford to run so many self-damage effects. The idea of running Molten Giant and Sauna Regular in Demon Hunter sounds cute, but it’s probably going to end up getting us killed too often.
Score: 1
Spirit Peddler
A big, clunky demon added to the collection of terrible demons that the class has received over the years. A 6-mana 6/6 rush is unacceptable for constructed play. The deathrattle technically turns Peddler into a “free” minion, but the effect is slow and requires us to avoid running cheap minions to become consistently useful. By turn 6, we should be cheating out a big minion if we want our deck to be competitively viable. Turn 7 is when too much removal becomes available to control decks. In the inverse, a large percentage of games against aggressive decks are already over, to the point “cheat cards” are rarely strong enough to make an impact.
This is a Demon Hunter big minion that’s not even good in a Big Demon Hunter deck.
Score: 1
Demonic Deal
Another decent card at its baseline, but with a questionable drawback. Dealing 4 damage for 2 mana with lifesteal is clearly strong that makes it a bigger Drain Soul. But putting a random expensive demon at the top of our deck is a very bad effect. We’re basically skipping our draw the next turn with the likelihood of topdecking a useless card.
Expensive demons can carry some late game value, but if we’re trying to fight off aggression by playing Demonic Deal in the early game, then we don’t want to draw some random, expensive, clunky demon instead of the cards in our deck.
We’re also ignoring the fact that Demon Hunter’s late game is non-existent, so there’s no realistic deck that would play this card even if it was useful. But in the future, if Demon Hunter does find a competitive late game strategy, it will still not run this card. A touring Shaman also won’t play this card as it has a better Fel spell to run in Sigil of Skydiving.
Score: 1
Final Thoughts: This set looks like a ‘skip’ for both Demon Hunter and Shaman. Infernal Stapler is the only card that could become feasible in a competitive deck, but we wouldn’t hold our breath.
